After announcing I took a step away from freelancing, a legal aide with aspirations of a cushy freelance career shot me an e-mail.

“Can people still even start a freelance career?”

I did it for just a year and did so out of college, so I don’t pretend to be any sort of expert. Yet, as writing — like publishing — as a commodity falls in value (and the prices that come with them), I sure feel like it’s worth making clear my experience.

I first made clear that, even without clips, you can start freelancing. People can still get paid, but what was always hard is becoming harder.

I shared the advice that others gave to me:

1. Don’t choose to freelance right out of college or without established contacts
2. Don’t (start) freelance(ing) in a bad economy
3. Don’t (start) freelance(ing) when the industry is in the midst of a revolution.

Here are some posts I also shared with the reader.

• Five rules of freelancing I didn’t always follow
• The pros and cons of my freelancing career
• Every college journalist should be freelancing right now
• The four reasons for a freelancer to decide to write a story
• A freelancer needs a niche to survive

Sometimes it’s the stories you don’t quite expect to, that get one of the warmest responses.

I posted two weeks ago about a story on the secret lives of ballerinas I wrote for the Inquirer.

It came on the same day as my Philadelphia Weekly cover story on suburban rapper Asher Roth. While the Roth profile has gotten more than 40 comments and the glare of Phawker, my ballerina feature has received a small outpouring from pleased readers.

On Facebook, a number of old high school friends noted their interest in it, and I get messages from many others, including my 18-year-old, sports-obsessed cousin. More than a few e-mails came in and on other social media, I was surprised to find a handful of notes from readers.

I put a lot of my freelancing work out there, but I rarely get more than a couple responses at a time. I didn’t expect a quiet story on ballerinas to bring such a response, particularly not on the same day as a big, loud profile on a growing pop icon.

At least one full letter came through the proper Inqy channels, too. See the text of it below.

Dear Mr. Wink,

Our whole family enjoyed your article in yesterday’s Inquirer on the interests of the Pennsylvania Ballet dancers when they are offstage.  Brooke Moore is one of our favorite new ballerinas to watch, and the article caught our attention right away.

Our son and daughter, both young dancers who have danced in PA Ballet’s Nutcracker and other productions, were very interested to read your article. Our children, ages 14 and 11, study with Lisa Collins Vidnovic at Metropolitan Ballet Academy in Jenkintown.  Miss Collins danced with the PA Ballet with both Jeffrey Gribler and Martha Chamberlain, whom you mention in your article.  You may be interested to know that after her career with the PA Ballet, Miss Collins opened and now directs a very successful ballet school with more than 400 students.  Metropolitan Ballet’s acclaimed Boys’ Scholarship Program has over 55 boys enrolled, with an age range of 7 to 18, all of whom study with William DeGregory, another former dancer with the PA Ballet, and current director of PA Ballet II.

Both Miss Collins and Mr. DeGregory have carried their passion for dance into their lives beyond the stage, and more importantly, are instilling an appreciation and love for dance into the next generations through their excellence in teaching, and their graciousness in mentoring. Because a dancer’s stage career does not last forever, it is important for dancers to think beyond the performance moment.

I am so appreciative of the role models my children have in Miss Collins and Mr. DeGregory, and in the dancers they know from the PA Ballet, to help them cultivate their interests and passions.  Many thanks as well for your article which is an inspiration to all young dancers.

Sincerely, Angela C.

See other reader response I’ve gotten for past stories here.

I was at the library last week. I’m not sure the expansion is a necessary ingredient of the Philadelphia ego. Chasing technology as an improvement when the city is not flush is foolish. I can’t imagine it’s a good thing to chase down short attention spans.

Before building it the city should do an evaluation of how much is actually part of the library and not transitory technology.

What only librarians who work in the system know is that the “expansion” makes much less room for books. When the FLP decided to expand the administration it asked librarians at Central to weed one-third of their (flagship, unique) collections. This is a disaster for researchers and readers who rely on Central’s collections.

What many librarians would prefer is to take over the Family Court building which already matches Central for design, is the greener option (only renovation is needed, and maybe a skybridge to connect) and could effectively double the space rather than reducing it, for collections.

Finally, in our enthusiasm for technology, let us not throw out the baby with the bath water. Most books are best read in hard copy, and please do not believe that we will eventually be able to find all that we would like to read on the Internet.

I don’t want to repeat this anymore, so let me direct you elsewhere.

I got an e-mail from a young aspiring journalist, still in high school and already coming to the questions I just started coming upon late in college. Her question:

how do you buy spaces on a google seerch?

Hey, even she will tell you that I told her to work on her grammar and spelling. (Oh, word processors, what have you done to us?).

But more importantly, it made me realize I never wrote the obligatory “own your name in Google” post. I have surely touched on it in previous posts, but rather than repurpose that information or rewrite what has been written so many times, I say to young reporter or fresh-on-the-web journalist, find out why branding your name online matters, and then read the following – because they’ve already done the job.

• HowardOwens: Owning Your Name In Search
• SeanBlanda: How To Overcome Your George Blanda

Somewhat relatedly, lots of posts I’ve read have focused on what that branding should be (and whether it really matters):

• BrianJamesKirk: Confessions of a Writer I Drink Beer and Network Socially
• Colin Lenton: Photos, Personal History and Facebook
  

I’ve written about using social networks to develop more control on a Web search of your name:

• The End is Here: Christopher Wink Just Joined Facebook
• Check me out on MySpace: why I am selling out
  
• Your digital legacy: we know your wild past won’t forget, but who doesn’t?

OK, that should answer your questions. Have anymore? Let me know below.

And I thought children hated me.

Debbie Reinhardt’s second-grade class at the Kiel School in Kinnelon, N.J. sent me Flat Stanley, the title character of a children’s book from 1964. The flattened boy from the book gets sent around the world in an envelope.

I’ve been charged with showing our pal Stanley around Philadelphia, but before I get to that, I took him on the road to our nation’s capital earlier this week, where I was for the presidential inauguration of Barack Obama. Check some dispatches below.

It’s a reason for students to get excited about geography, to give it a better feel, I suppose. I was happy to oblige, carrying Stanley to all the major tourist stops in Washington D.C. on Monday, the day before the inauguration.

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_3WFPcQLk9A]

Stanley and I also had our photo taken in front of the Lincoln Memorial and the White House.

Any other schools out there want a tour, virtual or otherwise of Philadelphia or, Hell, anywhere else I am going? Reach out to me here, or below. Anyone else have Flat Stanley experiences?

Thanks Mrs. Reinhardt and her entire class, just wait until your Philadelphia tour, which should come some time next week.

I got a few e-mails on the matter, too, actually. (No surprise they were as conflicted as the comments)

What we all seemed to agree on is that newspapers (or any RSS feed for that matter) are fools to offer no excerpt in an RSS post.

The debate came on how much content should be provided in a feed, though.

I offer only an excerpt in my feed (subscribe, if you haven’t). Many other blogs, though, offer full text, allowing fans to read their content in their feed catcher.

The first method guarantees some clicks if a reader is interested, a model good for newspapers or other monetized sites. It also limits the amount of clutter in a feed reader, the personal preference that informs my decision for this un-monetized site.

The second method is driven by a mentality of link economy, rather than content economy. That is, readers should be able to get their content however they want it. To get clicks, newspapers or others should encourage comment and dialogue.

This is truly a debate in philosophy at this juncture. I’m sticking with an excerpt until I decide it’s worth monetizing this site, and will do so with my full-text feeds. Note, most full-text feeds have advertising. Until then, my feed will remain excerpted. I must say, though, I am not sure I can’t be swayed.

So tell me what you think. Add your comments with the others here, or comment below.

Partial or full-text? Can monetized sites really offer full-text and still get clicks or should they monetize their feeds?

Photo from Bytelove.com.

Courtesy of Marcus Bösch.

I’m always surprised and really proud to see my unique visitors and subscriptions increasing and love nothing more than a fresh comment to help create a dialogue I try to highlight on this site.

Now, that has happily been a fairly regular occurrence for a good portion of this site’s one-year plus existence. Still, sometimes something happens that makes me smile, and, really, helps me to remain appreciative and in awe of the power of the Internet.

As I first Tweeted last week, a German blogger named Marcus Bösch linked to this site (danke!), suggesting aspiring young journalists – who speak some English – should check out my feed.

Now that’s just awesome. Through cognates, I understand half of it, the rest I got with BabelFish.

Here’s a (very) rough translation, for which I need some help completing:

How does someone promote himself as a young journalist? Here’s an example!

Christopher Wink works in Philadelphia. Freshly graduated and ambitious with a WordPress blog as basis. German unsalaried employees (?) – give a look!

Any German speakers out there (Marcus, for one?), what am I missing in translation about “German unsalaried employees?” Did I get the rest mostly correct?

It is so easy to forget the stunning platform the Internet offers. Don’t forget it. This is why folks say newspapers need to find a niche. Twenty-five years ago the Philadelphia Inquirer had a dozen international bureaus and people were reading their newspaper for news from abroad. Now that a German blogger can find and push traffic my way just hours after I freshly post something, competition is like never before. Inqy, what do you provide that no other paper in the world provides?

Danke für die Unterstützung ich, Marcus Bösch!

Update: Posting this reminded me of a caustic comment in Spanish I got back in March. Fortunately, I have a handful of friends who speak the language enough.

Jason L. Martin

There are, I’m willing to bet, a lot of Jason Martins.

One particular Jason Martin is an online marketing manager in Cincinnati, Ohio.

He left a worthwhile comment on yesterday’s post about branidng your byline.

It prompts a conversation I’ve had here and read elsewhere, but it’s always worth returning to. With a common name how do you break through a crowded field of Web-search competition?

First Martin’s coment:

Christopher, what do you do if your name is already a registered domained owned by someone else? I could buy my name with my middle initial, but few people would know or think to include my middle initial in my domain. Advice?

Surely. First, with a Google search, I checked to find some other competitive Jason Martin’s online.

I see Jason competes with a Californian musician, an unpdated blog and an artist. There are others, so there’s no doubting the crowd, but that is nothing he can’t slice through.

What’s more, Jason L. Martin’s LinkedIn profile gets a top-two yield when incorporating his middle initial – which is in his LinkedIn URL, but not his profile.

In his comment, Jason said “few people would know” to include his middle initial.

Of course, the response is, why?

It still blows my mind that Del.ico.us began the news aggregation business with a .us domain extension, an “ico” address and a sub-domains. Two periods and three nonsense letter combinations. But, of course, they branded that.

Jason has two choices. Compete in a competitive field of Jason Martins. Buy JasonMartin.net or .us or whatever he needs to do. Then flood online social networking devices – if only just to sit and place his flag – link out to folks and try to build.

Or, get on board with Jason L. Martin. Write it everywhere. On his LinkedIn profile, in e-mail signatures on birthday cards to his great Aunt.

These competitions are nothing new. My good buddy and Web designer Sean Blanda competes in Web searches with Hall of Fame NFL legend George Blanda and I’ve been saddled with the founder of the Blue Man Group, whose name is the same as mine.

Really, Jason Martin or Jason L. Martin, it doesn’t much matter. What does is with what you feel comfortable, getting started on using a single version and running with it.

I don’t care if anyone calls me “Chris Wink.” That’s my name, but I chose to dominate “Christopher Wink” Web yields, so that’s how I choose to compete and I won’t look back. That hurts your brand.

Because the reality is this doesn’t matter as much as folks like me make it sound. If you’re smart and work hard, you’ll be just fine. But, make a choice and go with it.

Best of luck to Jason and all you others out there trying to brand a name even more common than mine.

Any more advice? Did I miss anything? Any other common names to deal with? Leave a comment below.

I already shared the wide array of reader response I got for a recent A1 story I had for the Philadelphia Inquirer that covered the Harrisburg reform movement [There's video for the story up now, too].

I got another call yesterday that I wanted to share.

A Maria called to compliment me on the story but she had one gripe that she “had to get off [her] chest.”

Note this passage from my story, regarding Eric Epstein, the coordinator of RocktheCapital.org:

Epstein doesn’t support himself with activism, but through investments, writing, lecturing and consulting.

“I do three things,” Epstein said. “Work, sleep and ferment revolution.”

The emphasis is added but the point is made.

Maria told me the word Epstein meant was foment, which means to agitate: try to stir up public opinion and that word would certainly be correct. She also said that ferment means to cause fermentation, the process by which wines are made. But, I have found, ferment and foment are actually synonyms, though that is probably because of misuse of the former.

Still, I went back to my recorded conversation with Epstein – which I would post if I could find any free audio host (if you know of one, tell me) – and found that, really, Maria was correct. Epstein said “foment,” but I misquoting him as having said “ferment.”

Image courtesy of Andy Budd.

Last week, I shared some reader response I received after a recent story on state Rep. Babette Josephs ran on the cover of the Inquirer’s Local Section.

So it comes as no surprise that getting a story on the cover the newspaper – one about the Harrisburg reform movement yesterday – got some response, too.

A man who – jokes aside – I think was intoxicated and was either complimenting or insulting my coverage of “citizens” – I sincerely couldn’t tell. No name, no number, but he called back and left a second message in which he said the following:

Oh, I forgot. My primary concern is helping and reliquifying [sic] the American middle class, and until, well, that is the basis of everthing, until that happens, this country isn’t going anywheres [sic] and you can quote me on it.”

I don’t know who he is or how to contact him or why I would want to quote him – but I sure will.

I got caught up in an e-mail exchange with a man concerned about capital versus capitol versus Capitol. In my story, as per Inqy style, I used the last, but he thought it should have been the first or at least the second. The second, as he suggested, was correct, of course, by the word’s dictionary definition, but not the paper’s style.

Because I am serving an internship that has me with several newspapers this summer, I don’t have an Inquirer e-mail address, so my tagline for the story only includes a phone number. The few e-mails I have gotten, then, mean they have sought me out online – which I think is great, shows this Web site is serving a purpose and working after all. Still, Web searches and E-mail exchanges are only two elements of the Internet age. The story also gets the Inqy’s famed online comments! I wrote about reader response for my Babette Josephs story, but didn’t include the story’s comments on Philly.com because it only had one.

The gadflies story had more – though only six. They mostly rightly encourage citizen activism, but one is fun:

Flyswatters are made to be used against annoying gadflies. Simply use them to swat them down!

Still, phone calls are still popular among newspaper readership – typically older folks – some of whom also took issue the story’s title.

A man and I shared a few minutes of phone conversation regarding the headline. He took issue with calling the activists “gadflies,” which he (and Gene Stilp, one of the reformer’s in my story) thought was pejorative. I had to explain reporters almost never write their own headlines but was still happy to engage in a conversation on the matter.

I would say that the average Inquirer reader – and I don’t think I am the average reader I think I am fairly highly educated – wouldn’t read the story because they [sic] would think, ‘Oh just some annoying bug in the Capitol.”

He’s right that the word, by definition, has a negative connotation, but I think a copy editor used the word for its brevity and interest. He did say that he went on to read the story, which vindicated the headline, but he wanted his concerns lobbied to my editors.

One man followed up – calling me at 12:30 P.M. on Tuesday, less than three hours after he left me a message. He wanted the mailing addresses of the activists in my story so that he might join their cause.

I don’t know how you feel and what your role is as a newspaper reporter, but to me, the more you read about the politicians, the more you get turned off. I want to write to these gentlemen to see what I can do to help locally.”

The sweet-sounding old man who said he “lived in the Philadelphia area” seems a perfect example, some legislators might say, of a reader who never gets to see the positive because media always focus on the negative. Still, the man identified his representative as “pretty clean” and was simply concerned “about the rest of the state.”

I got a call from a parole agent in Philadelphia who had been working on what he called “corruption” in the city’s parole board. He wanted advice on pursuing his cause, so did a woman with vague concerns over malfeasance by her state delegation. They wanted contact information, too. Granted these voices are those unfamiliar enough with the power of the Internet to know they could find most of the men featured in my story online, but it was a good part of journalism – one that has always been a part of the craft but needs to be even more important to reporters: sharing stories more intimately with readers. I can connect people – there is power in that.

I am also happy to say I got a complimentary e-mail on the story from an editor of another publication. “You’ve been producing some good stuff this summer, Chris,” the editor – whom I have come to respect for a number of reasons. That means a lot coming from a seasoned member of the industry.

Perhaps less professionally meaningful though more surprising, I got a call from two former editors of my college newspaper – Brandon Lausch and Christopher A. Vito – who happened to be visiting the Newseum in Washington, D.C. and flipping through the day’s front pages when they found my byline by chance. I got an unexpected call from two old friends, supporters and professional models with kind words.

Photo courtesy of Swapatorium.